Sara Kruzansky, teacher of Jewish History, grew up in Chicago. Her parents, from a shtetl and a village in Poland, met in Warsaw, where they were married before her father moved to the U.S. at age 20 to avoid being drafted into the tsarist Russian army. He participated in the Gaviston movement, a push to move Jewish immigrants to places other than New York City. After a few years in various cities in the Midwest, her father, shoemaker by trade, followed the garment industry to Chicago. Sara describes her childhood as very poor. She grew up in a mostly African-American neighborhood, but her family was all Jewish. Her parents were religious and observed every Jewish holidayâeven the minor ones that some others might have skipped. She remembers being pulled out of school for every one, and picks out Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur as her favorites, perhaps because they happened around the same time as going back to school. Every shabbes her mother would cook raisin bread and clean the whole house. They were not too observant to not turn on the radio, though, and she remembers shabbes as defined by the candle sticks and the radio on the kitchen table, playing the weekly Chicago Jewish radio program.

Sara always loved school. She remembers specific teachers from gradeschool, especially Miss Johnson, who taught her to read, which was, for Sara, âmagic.â She has been an avid reader her entire life. She went to religious school as well as public school, and loved them both. She never had to be taught that she was Jewish, it was simply a part of the home she grew up in. Both of her parents spoke Yiddish, to each other, and to their children. She and her older brother would speak back in Yiddish, but her brother would answer in English. Sara remembers specific Yiddish phrases that her parents, particularly her mother, would use when she was growing up. Many of them she still uses today.

Sara has three children and seven grandchildren. Sara never had aunts or uncles or cousins growing up, since her parents were the only members of her family to come to the States. She remembers her mother being very sad, missing her family in Europe. Today, she feels a great joy that her grandchildren have cousins and a large family since they all live near her in Danbury, CT.

She fell into teaching, wasnât planning on going into it, but has found it very rewarding. Jewish history has become a passion of hers, and she especially loves teaching about the Middle Ages.

It was the foundation of the state of Israel that stands out most in Saraâs mind when she looks back over the historical events she lived through. She remembers standing in the Chicago stadium and listening to the broadcast of Ben Gurionâs address.

Sara has traveled to Eastern Europe several times. When she went to visit the town her mother grew up in, she was asked by a PeaceCorps worker to talk to an English class because they had never met a Jewish person before. Sara was surprised to not feel much emotion on this visit; it was then a city of 20,000, not the town her mother grew up in, and there was no sign of the Jewish culture that once was prominent there. She felt similarly on another trip to Ukraine, that Eastern Europe is a sad place. It was only on one trip, in the late 70s, to Rumania that she made some emotional connections when she was able to visit and speak to families there in Yiddish.

For Sara, Yiddish is mostly an academic language today. As a spoken language, it died along with the speakers during the Holocaust. She is grateful to have learned it from her parents, and also to read and write it to fulfill a college requirement when she went back for her masters after some of her children had already graduated. For Sara, Yiddish is the language of her parents, and she has much emotional attachment to it because of her love of them. She remembers her father reading several different Yiddish newspapers in the home; he especially loved Peretzâ stories. She doesnât really believe in the revival of the language. Sara enjoyed her religious education much more than her brothers did. While they had a melamid, she learned Hebrew and Yiddish, Jewish history, and songs.

Many things have changed through generations, Sara says. Showing a picture from the old country, she points out the difference in dress between parents and children. Coming to America, she and her siblings were very different from her parents. Looking at her grandchildren, there are huge differences, too, the biggest being rates of intermarriage. Sara leaves her grandchildren with the advice to be determined, but flexible, for you never know what life will throw you.

To learn more about the Wexler Oral History Project, visit: http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/tell-your-story

To cite this interview: Sara Kurzansky Oral History Interview, interviewed by Christa Whitney, Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, Karmazin Recording Studio, Yiddish Book Center, June 12, 2011. Video recording, http://archive.org/details/SaraKruzansky12june2011YiddishBookCenter ( [date accessed] )

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